ACTION ALERT: Tell the USDA to Keep Livestock Vaccine Trials in the Lab & Out of Our Food

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is conducting field trials of bird flu vaccines for dairy cows.

On August 28, 2024, his Center for Veterinary Biologics announced a huge change to the way the U.S. Department of Agriculture tests new livestock vaccines.

It used to be that livestock vaccine studies were only conducted in laboratories. Now, for the first time ever, vaccine studies are happening “outside of containment without terminal disposal of milk and other commodities.”

In other words, the vaccine “trial” is happening on commercial farms and the milk is going right into the food supply!

These are Genetically Modified mRNA vaccines, which have unique implications for food safety. A traditional vaccine puts a weakened or inactivated virus into the body. Not mRNA vaccines. Instead, mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) vaccines use mRNA that’s genetically engineered in a laboratory to teach the body’s cells how to make a viral protein.

Will the genetically engineered mRNA or the viral protein produced by the cows’ cells end up in the milk? Scientists who studied how the COVID-19 vaccines changed breast milk found that it can. In fact, some scientists have even proposed using cows’ milk for oral vaccination, because cows’ milk is an ideal delivery mechanism for genetically engineered mRNA.

This battle to stop GMO mRNA vaccines for dairy cows is similar to our fight to get Monsanto’s rbGH (recombinant bovine growth hormone) out of the food system. Approved for use in 1993, this was the first GMO in the food supply. Given to cows to make them overproduce milk, rbGH caused cows’ udders to swell to unnatural proportions and get more frequent infections. The composition of the milk changed with rbGH, increasing levels of IGF-1, a growth factor linked to cancer. Widespread consumer rejection of rBGH milk led to the popularity of organic and non-GMO milk. By 2014, only 9.7 percent of U.S. dairy operations were using rbGH.

We can stop the use of risky GMO mRNA vaccines from entering our food supply as well.

There are way too many questions about how GMO mRNA shots work to do field trials on commercial dairy farms while letting the cows’ milk enter the food supply.

TAKE ACTION: Tell the USDA to Keep Livestock Vaccine Trials in the Lab & Out of Our Food!

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